Essays, nonfiction, and short fiction.
Letter to my Son
Son,
Your due date passed in silence. I packed your clothes into two trash bags, the beginning of what would’ve been your first year, and placed them on the halfway point on the stairs. Carefully curated onesies, sweatpants, and sweaters combined with clothes and toys your sister has outgrown. Two weeks later I drove them to Goodwill.
For Paul
I don't know where to begin.
The quiet hatred I carry for my fiancé is liquid cement permeating my stomach and intestines, hardening and softening, as he gently smiles and asks me how I'm feeling. My pregnancy was a source of passive aggressive fat jokes, culminating in him telling me I was chubby while he hasn't lost an ounce of the 60lbs he said he would two years ago.
Letters to my Daughter: September 2, 2020
I've entered my late 30's alienated from your father, his family, raising you on my own with infrequent visits from him. He uses you as a prop to impress his girlfriend. No more phone calls and quick messages from Gigi -- It's the two of us against the world.
I have a power within myself that carries me through everything untouched. It glows within me when dealing with your father. I imagine myself as fine mist being pushed through the air like white ribbons, bouncing off of everything I touch, making no purchase with the world around me. I'm flexible and unknowable, building momentum toward something larger than myself. I respect myself more than needing to hold onto anyone, being your mother has taught me that.
Letters to my Daughter: July 19, 2020
he sun rises over the Lafayette River and makes our sun room glow. I watch it overtake the tree line across the water sitting in my papasan chair. It's something I do regularly with coffee before I wake you. A crumbling sidewalk forms a T below us, ending before the sandbar I take you to build sandcastles and continues over the bridge above the river.
Our neighbor's sun room caught stray bullets early in the morning, several pops and shattered glass before the sunrise and Old Dominion rowing teams could be seen gliding across the water. Before that, a car rammed into the corner streetlight, the only thing standing in between our friend's unit, a high speed police chase that ended in two people dragged out of the muddy distributary that separates us from our traditional home-owning neighbors. I stood in my sun room watching police officers walk along the sidewalk, between our garages, some with flashlights while most aggressively talked into their two-way strapped to their shoulders in the dark. Nothing came of either of those events, you slept through them, I watched along with my elderly neighbors with detached interest. I chose this place for how both remote and connected it was at the same time, hidden within an historic upper middle class neighborhood, but not even the affluent are safe from downtown Norfolk.
Letters to my Daughter: November 24, 2019
Your father shuts himself in the smallest room of the house and sleeps on an air mattress with a throw blanket he bought from Amazon. He spends hours talking to a girl he met on an online game. She's the full package. He’s confessed his love for her in a low, timorous voice lying curled up on his air mattress, it squelches and bumps against the door whenever he moves. He's reassured her we're leaving soon and is trying to convince her to move in with him to see if it would work out. He wants to be respectful to me and show you what it looks like for a man to love a woman of quality. He told her he never loved me, I was just a girl he got pregnant before he left for deployment. He tried to do the right thing by us, but I'm too different and don't listen. He invited us to stay with him to help me get back onto my feet because he wasn't comfortable with the sub par living conditions of our old apartment.
I wasn't supposed to hear that, but I did and it can't be unheard.
Four years robbed of value -- laundry washed and meals cooked without needing to be asked, illnesses catered to, trips to the zoo, movies watched together that made you smile, teaching you how to swim in the pool, going to the library to find books for you, including him in our mundane life that no one else gets to see, giving him the opportunity to become an involved father, sharing the most intimate parts of myself with him, all discounted because he's unable to admit to himself he squandered his time with us lost in depression and alcoholism.
Letters to my Daughter: September 2, 2019
Being your mummy is nuanced: I pay bills, mete out my time prudently throughout the day, and ensure you have what you need. Days blend into each other. I avoid cheap coffee with an electric espresso machine under my desk. I should feel fortunate, but my heart is a black star folding into itself.
Your father bought a small house with an in-ground pool in the backyard and invited us to live with him for a while. The water is a deep emerald and your toys are kept in a broken bucket by the steps. You have a queen size bed in a room twice the size of your old room with a window facing the tepid green water in the backyard. What's left of our modest life before your father's house is stacked in boxes in the attic. I imagine taping them closed and shipping them back to Washington state. I don't understand why he wanted us here or even why I agreed.
Letters to my Daughter: October 24, 2017
I measure the passing of time by your illnesses, small victories in my day, the presence of new teeth pushing through your tender gums, the way we both sleep through the night. All of it adds up to our life together. Mundane and beautiful.
I have plans for us. I imagine us with passports visiting Canada. You'll have a small backpack and carefully assembled outfits, I'll have a medium case on wheels for the bulk of our things. We'll be explorers, experiencing the world from two different points of our shared life. I'll be slowly encroaching middle-age as you grow into yourself, I'll hold your hand and anything will be possible.
Letters to my Daughter: September 13, 2017
You crawl around scattered toys on the floor, tottering on wobbly knees with outstretched hands as if you're gauging the distance between yourself and larger objects the way I watch the leaves on the tree flutter outside. Chewing on your bottom lip you advance, your small fingers dig into the carpet for traction. I watch you tumble, lying flat with your small toes spread out toward the ceiling, and we both wait. It’s been like this for a while. I chase after you and you smile and we do it all over again. Grownup life will be much the same, tumbling and waiting for something bigger to happen, your face pressed against something hard with little strength left to manage. I won’t always be there to help you work through it.
Amanecer
Sentimentality and a predilection towards mysticism is common with the women of my family. In my teens my aunt took me to her bruha, a short dark haired woman who could tell my fortune by charting the arrangement of stars on the day I was born. It felt silly, but Tia was in earnest. It was her way of ensuring I was prepared for what lay ahead.
Yes All Women
My sense of self has been tempered by the men in my life, each carrying a personal hurt so deep my love couldn’t reach them. Whether it was failed dreams or lack of gumption it fell upon me like hot bile. Suddenly what they failed to see in themselves I suffered in tandem. I wasn’t allowed to exceed their limitations and my affection for them was supposed to be inexhaustible.
Limbo
Summer is brief and oppressive. The ceiling of my barracks room gives the illusion of ventilation with pronounced plastic slits grouped together next to a larger unit, drab gray and ineffective. I have a box fan propped against the screen pointed inward toward my bed, a gentle hum that rolls my green blackout curtains. People around me are convinced winter will be especially harsh this year, but I’m impatient.
The Root of the Matter
The day I graduated from Saint Edward's University was dolorous: I wanted to wear jeans, but was hastily zipped into a modest black dress and matching heels, half-size too big. I wanted to go to my favorite diner on the East Side, but took three steps inside before I was reproached for not making reservations somewhere expensive. The missing tiled bar and barefoot children stopped them at the door.